Warm up

[Mills Morrison]

Warming up for dove season with two rounds at the Forest City Gun Club dove tower. Thanks to John Allen

[Chris Robenalt]

Mills, are there any Eurasion down in your area you can practice on? Just curious...
Listening to some member's replies, I feel like we are very fortunate to have an abundance here in AZ. We were going out today, but heavy rain last night shut that down. Will try again tomorrow. Nice pic, really nice gun!

Chris, AZ

[Daryl Corona]

Chris,

Do the eurasian birds have any affect on the mourning dove population in AZ? We have a good population of mourning doves here in MD but would love to have the eurasian birds to shoot as long as they don't diminish the natives.

[Chris Robenalt]

I don't think the Eurasion have any affect on the Mourning or White Wing. They fly together. I do think the White Wing chase the Eurasion off though after watching them. You might put the same question out to Phil Carr, one of our members. He could tell you more than I.

Chris, AZ

[Daryl Corona]

Phil??

[Phillip Carr]

I have not observed any real change in the numbers of our native doves. The collared doves seem to like the suburban areas, were our morning dove especially prefer rural areas.
I rarely shoot a collared dove when I am out shooting in areas I historically have hunted for our native birds.
I suppose time will tell. It’s only been about 10 years since I spotted my first Eurasian dove. Now I observe more collared doves than our White wing or our morning dove.

[Daryl Corona]

I can't help but think that the competition for nest sights would hurt the native birds but then again it would be nice to be able to shoot an invasive species year round. Thanks Phil.

[Phillip Carr]

Daryl you would think that nesting sights would be an issue, but for the most part they use different preferred nesting areas. I will say that the Whitewing dove can go up against collared doves but the Morning dove are smaller and are more timid.
Chris mentioned the doves mixing in on the flocks coming in which they do, but ai think possibly they just all kind of get together in the flight paths coming into the dairy’s.
These are just my thoughts and observations. The dairy’s are about the only place I find the birds will commingle.

[Mills Morrison]

Nesting habitat is a big issue where we are. Our usual opening hunt has suffered in recent years due to habitat destruction on neighboring properties.

[Craig Larter]

Our warm up was a nuisance hunt for blackbirds destroying a neighbors corn. Like shooting doves in Argentina but without the plane ride :rotf:. Here is a picture of my son with his new VH 16ga.